VENTURE CAPITAL POST

Indian investors at a December 14 speech by Afghan President Hamid Karzai were not convinced that the latter's country is safe enough to carry out their investment plans, according to a Bloomberg report.

Dara compiled by Bloomberg indicated that investors are exiting from their gold-backed exchange-traded products this year. $69.5 billion in value was removed in the ETPs and analysts expect an additional 311 tons will be removed from the ETPs next year.

Some industry observers believed excess liquidity spurred by central banks' economic monetary policies could result to asset bubbles in niche markets by year 2014.

At a luncheon meeting hosted by Keidanren lobby group and the Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industry, corporate leaders expressed the key importance of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations for the revival of the Japanese economy.

On Saturday, the Chinese State Council said that it has instructed the China Securities Regulatory Commission to life the approval restrictions on small and medium-sized companies with less than 200 shareholders.

The government of North Korea under Kim Jong-un appeared to be purging close allies of disgraced political leader and family member Chang Song-thaek as the former orders its business people in China to come home.

A Sprint and T-Mobile merger will most likely not happen as the former needs to overcome certain hurdles to ensure that a smooth transition could take place, according to a ZDNet article.

Last-minute bettors on Friday were said to have driven the amount of jackpot money for Mega Millions from an estimated $425 million to over an estimated $550 million, according to lottery officials on Saturday.

Parent company Gulf Film welcomed Debbie Stanford Kristiansen as new chief of its subsidiary, cinema chain for UAE Grand Cinemas as it prepares to implement plans for its next phase of expansion.

The the government of the United Arab Emirates through its Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA) agreed to develop a luxury tourism resort in Montenegro, said Prime Minister Milo Dukanović in a statement published on his government's website.

A 2013 Billionaire census report by Wealth-X and UBS showed an increase in the number of millionaires in the Middle East, and that amount of wealth hold by Middle Eastern billionaires topped any other region in the world.

Fair trade regulator The Competition Commission of India said it has cleared the proposed merger of France's Alstom Power Holdings SA and domestic industrial player Kalyani Group.

Moped, a messaging platform startup, had been acquired by local cloud-based software startup 6Wunderkinder, according to the former's announcement on its website. Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.

Yahoo Inc had a bad time this week, observed TechCrunch as the company struggled to appease its customers, including small business owners due to the outage of some of its key Web services.

The fight between Pay-television companies and major US broadcasters, and TV over Internet startup Aereo would most likely see intervention from the US government, according to a report on Investors Business Daily today.